CRYPTOCURRENCY 101: Beginners Guide to Buying, Selling & Storing Bitcoin, Ethereum Etc...

[Leoto]

In my opinion, crypto-currency is purely speculation/gambling at this point in time. Coins have no intrinsic value, essentially no fiat value and there isn't enough critical mass or regulation to ensure that operators (those creating the coins) are on the up-and-up.

Couldn't agree more. That's why I sold half my Bitcoin (which I bought at $300 per BTC a few years ago, and, until recently, had forgotten that I even owned them) when I saw the current ridiculous prices. The other half I'll keep for speculation and for shopping at Overstock

I think the Blockchain technology itself has a bright future, but I'm not so sure about the future of Bitcoin and Ethereum. I read somewhere recently (I think it was a Tweet) that Bitcoin and Ethereum are like Betamax and VHS - one of them will win, but BOTH will eventually become obsolete.

 

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[huntiii]

In my opinion, crypto-currency is purely speculation/gambling at this point in time. Coins have no intrinsic value, essentially no fiat value and there isn't enough critical mass or regulation to ensure that operators (those creating the coins) are on the up-and-up.

That said, if you like speculating/gambling, crypto-currency is a great place to be these days. With the concept just hitting the masses, there are a lot of people who are throwing money into the space without much concern for research or due diligence. As long as that continues, currencies will increase in value and "early adopters" will essentially benefit from the pyramid scheme.

At some point, some currencies will likely establish reputation and fiat value, and others will go away. Whether it's too late to jump on board and make some money is up for debate, but I'm still gambling -- in fact, I bought into three ICOs this week and have made well into the 5-figures on crypto in the past few months. I have no idea if I'll lose it all or make a good bit more, but I don't mind taking a small portion of my portfolio and gambling with it from time to time...

Btw, as a technology guy, the currencies that interest me the most are those that solve the biggest and most pervasive technology problems. Not surprisingly, those are the coins that have been doing the best the past few months...

Bitcoin has fiat value its currently worth about $2700 fiat dollars. I can sell one bitcoin right this moment, someone will exchange 2700 fiat dollars for it. And what is the intrinsic value of a dollar?

 

[Chinobey]

I hate poloniex quite alot of times it has stopped me from purchasing or selling at very crucial times and a lot of the time the site is down all together.

 

[qaerst]

Unreliable.
Your money can spike or you can lose a lot instantly.
The only reason why i don't do crypto/bitcoin anymore is because i want to learn from MY mistakes and not be looking at graphs and try to "predict" profits.
But hey , if that's what you want to do more power to you!

 

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[qaerst]

For "most people" is certainly not the case. There's quite a lot of people o/s the US who are buying crypto and they are not using Coinbase. A piece of advice on anyone planning to use coinbase. While they are backed by VCs, they had a good few hours of outage when the peak was touched in BTC(XBT) - this is not good for an exchange. Furthermore, they blocked IP addresses o/s the US when this happened - which meant your crypto currency could be stuck and not withdrawn. I believe there's a class action lawsuit against them now. Sad, because they were standing up for privacy!

Anyways, there are other exchanges out there where you can buy, some charge a premium of course (its time for them to make money baby!)

Why i don't do bitcoin.
You think you have "control" over it but one site can just F*ck over the access to your money when they feel like it.

No thank you.

 

[Chinobey]

Why i don't do bitcoin.
You think you have "control" over it but one site can just F*ck over the access to your money when they feel like it.

No thank you.

Use your own wallet? Leaving money on an exchange is a very risky idea.

 

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[Sequential]

Why i don't do bitcoin.
You think you have "control" over it but one site can just F*ck over the access to your money when they feel like it.

No thank you.

You can use a hardware wallet for this btw, such as Ledger Nano S - but if it breaks, you are screwed!

 

[Sequential]

I am quite big into ripple i have a few thousand xrp and it took me like 30 minutes to buy it all when it was around 6 cents i don't know what the price of ripple is now as i don't check it is an investment that requires no time sure it is high risk but the rewards are huge. As for scammers always buy/sell on big exchanges where you can see the profile of the user you are selling to/buying from as you can easily tell if its a scam or not. At the end of the day most cryptos are high risk / high reward investments and don't put money you can't afford to lose into it.

I mined all of it, spent $0, but come sale time, I chose the biggest and "most safe" and he happened to exit scam at the same time, no way of avoiding it. Like I said, I got burned, sadly. The worst part of it was the emotional effect. But fiat money...there is a lot of it out there, like it says in the book, $3 trillion traded per day... it is time we lack and worrying about being scammed is a bad use of it!

 

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[ZTiago]

More of them are also "pump and dumps"
ICO scams , just like ANS , SNT , BANCOR and many more failed "projects "


ah yes let me put my whole income , career and work into a piece of plastic

ANS SCAM? LOL you have to check the sources bro

 

[Chinobey]

Unreliable.
Your money can spike or you can lose a lot instantly.
The only reason why i don't do crypto/bitcoin anymore is because i want to learn from MY mistakes and not be looking at graphs and try to "predict" profits.
But hey , if that's what you want to do more power to you!

I mined all of it, spent $0, but come sale time, I chose the biggest and "most safe" and he happened to exit scam at the same time, no way of avoiding it. Like I said, I got burned, sadly. The worst part of it was the emotional effect. But fiat money...there is a lot of it out there, like it says in the book, $3 trillion traded per day... it is time we lack and worrying about being scammed is a bad use of it!

You sold mass amounts of crypto to one person at one time? Sure you lose a bit on fee's and such but i usually split it up when selling or buying i would buy it from say 3 different people rather than place all my money into the trust of one person.

 

[Chinobey]

More of them are also "pump and dumps"
ICO scams , just like ANS , SNT , BANCOR and many more failed "projects "


ah yes let me put my whole income , career and work into a piece of plastic

Get a wallet on your computer place all your crypto into it erase from your computer make several copies of the wallet code and store them in safe places e.g your house a trusted family member etc.

 

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[Sequential]

I sold a few at first, it went through fine, so I pushed all of them through at once, like I said I got caught up in the scam.

I don't really trust governments when it comes to BTC either. Look at that australian guy... he came out, said he was Satoshi, the next day the Australian police arrested him (for nothing) and raided his house... why? He was not a criminal. My best guess is they were there to steal the BTC...why else would they raid someone based on a rumor?

Reported bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

Huge coincedence?

 

[ZTiago]

Yes. FBI seized a lot of cryptos also last week. Millions in USD

 

[huntiii]

I hate poloniex quite alot of times it has stopped me from purchasing or selling at very crucial times and a lot of the time the site is down all together.

Kind of a universal problem with crypto exchanges. None of them are prepared to handle the increased traffic.

 

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[huntiii]

I jumped into cryptos for fun and as an experiment last month with 1K€, I was aware of Bitcoin when it's value was $4 and when ETH value was something like less than $1. Missed that trains but hell that times this BTC looked like some sort of a very complex scam, those who invested in it now are rich without any effort.

For what I saw like JScott said it is nothing more than gambling and speculation for now.

A lot of people see it like a new gold rush and are putting their life savings into shitcoins following random advice from forums, losing everything in days trying to not to lose the next "ETH" train, but I think that with patience and using your head you can make a decent sum of money, sometimes from these guys who are putting stupidly their life savings and kids who are trying to being able to buy a lambo in one week.

I don't know where I'm going to end with this gambling, if lose this 1K€ it will be not such a big deal for me, it is just for fun like I said. But I'm seeing a lot of opportunities to "sell shovels" in this gold rush, maybe it is not worth to gamble in coins (I cannot say right now) but maybe it is looking into it with the "selling shovels" mindset if you're into technology and coding. Projects related to cryptocurrency are appearing like mushrooms right now.

Looks like you did ok so far. Make sure to claim your bitcoin cash.....

 

[huntiii]

Hearing LOTS of conflated bubble talk about Bitcoin lately. I wrote this quick article to really think about bitcoin being a bubble and what that means (a tech stock bubble or a tulip bubble) or is it not even a bubble....could be something much nicer?

Is Bitcoin a Bubble or is it the Pin that Pops the Bubble?

 

[NewManRising]

Is there a reason not to just use coinbase exclusively? Why use Poloniex?

 

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[NewManRising]

Got it. Thanks

 

[mguerra]

Some of my favorite other cryptocurrencies (alt coins) besides the big three are:

OMG
GAS
ZENCASH
EOS
FACTOM

Interesting read. What's your predictions on those?

 

[scott wisniewsk]

Do your own research on your alt coin choices . Dont go looking for investment advise on Fastlane forum.

 

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[NewManRising]

This is getting frustrating. Is there an exchange that allows you to buy other coins (without having to own any bitcoin) that doesn't make you jump through a bunch of hoops? I have some ETH on coinbase. But I want to buy some of the other coins. I signed up for Poloniex and Binance and it's a runaround and hassle.

 

[NewManRising]

Nevermind

 

[huntiii]

Do your own research on your alt coin choices . Dont go looking for investment advise on Fastlane forum.

Of course. Always do your own research. But those alt pics aren't just from someone off the fastlane forum

 

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[huntiii]

This is getting frustrating. Is there an exchange that allows you to buy other coins (without having to own any bitcoin) that doesn't make you jump through a bunch of hoops? I have some ETH on coinbase. But I want to buy some of the other coins. I signed up for Poloniex and Binance and it's a runaround and hassle.

You can try SHAPESHIFT.IO

But you need a wallet that will store the specific coin you acquire

 

[Elif]

Love it Hunter. Thanks for the step by step. Made a couple of first purchases on Coinbase in the past few weeks, and wasn't too sure the direction to take from there.

 

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[Elif]

Ok, and if you're new to Blockchain & Crypto - time for selfish plug, MJ pls delete if you don't wish to have this here - grab my report on understanding this in layman terms. I wrote this around 9 months ago, and identified Bitcoin, Ethereum and one more currency to look out for.